The Vatican announced the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn (pictured).
Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a bishop who was convicted three years ago of protecting a sexually abusive priest.

Robert Finn, of Kansas City diocese, had long been seen as emblematic of the Vatican’s failure to adequately address sex abuse. He was the highest-ranking US church official to have been found guilty of an abuse-related crime, but had not been made by the church to suffer any consequences for that verdict.

The resignation was announced on Tuesday by the Holy See as Pope Francis came under pressure in a separate case involving Bishop Juan Barros of Chile, who has also been accused of shielding a paedophile priest.

The Vatican’s daily news bulletin, which revealed Finn’s resignation, said: “The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the pastoral government of the diocese of St Joseph-Kansas City, Mo [Missouri], (United States) presented His Excellency Bishop Robert Finn.”

Finn will retain the title of bishop but will no longer lead the Kansas City diocese. Such abrupt resignations are exceedingly rare. Over the past decade, only one bishop among 200 in US dioceses have resigned in a similar fashion, according to the National Catholic Reporter, a media outlet which closely follows the Vatican.

The news will be welcomed by abuse advocates and critics of Pope Francis who have accused the Vatican of being far too slow to respond to Finn’s conviction.

In an interview with the Guardian in March, Peter Saunders, an abuse survivor who sits on a special Vatican committee to address the church’s legacy of abuse, said the committee would prove to be a “pointless exercise” if Finn were not removed immediately and the case in Chile remained unresolved. Asked for his response to Tuesday’s news, Saunders told the Guardian: “He should have been sacked a long time ago. Hopefully they can now take stock and move on.”

Finn was found guilty of a misdemeanour charge in 2012 after he failed to alert authorities to the fact that pornographic images of young girls had been found on the computer of a priest in his charge, the Rev Shawn Ratigan.

He was sentenced to two years of probation and his diocese was fined $1m (£670,000).

Abuse advocates began calling for his resignation three years ago, but the demands fell on deaf ears. Church officials said at the time that Finn would continue to carry out the “important obligations placed on him by the court”.

The resignation is likely to be seen as sending a message about how the church intends to deal with officials who are accused of covering up sex abuse. Two survivors of clerical sex abuse, Saunders and Marie Collins – who also sits on the committee – have been critical of Pope Francis’s handling of the Barros case.

Marie Collins (@marielco)

Bishop Finn has resigned. Things are moving slowly as I have said many times but they are moving in the right direction!

The Chilean bishop was nominated in January to the small diocese of Osorno, despite allegations by some child sex abuse survivors that he covered up abuse by his former mentor, a priest called Fernando Karadima. Some have accused the bishop of personally observing the abuse as it occurred. Barros has repeatedly denied the claim.

The Vatican issued a rare statement of support for Barros in March, saying it had found no “objective reason” to stop the appointment. That did not satisfy abuse advocates, however, who recently held an emergency meeting with Cardinal Sean O’Malley to try to convince the pope to act on the case.

Some Vatican experts say it is unlikely that Pope Francis will force Barros’s resignation or change his mind.

Austen Ivereigh, who has written a biography of the Argentinian pontiff, told the Guardian that the pope was unlikely to act if a church official had not formally been accused or investigated, because to do so would be seen as an unjust resolution.

Finn’s resignation may be seen as setting a standard in which bishops will only be ousted if, like him, they have been convicted of a crime.